Guest Blog by H3 Solutions' Joe Herres - PM Central Mobile, 20 Hours Start to Finish

The first thing you have to do when tackling a mobile application project is to really get into the right mindset.  Mobile applications are not just miniaturized versions of an entire application, but a subset of real, usable, functions from the desktop app that have been ported to allow a user to do their job while not at their desk.

One other consideration is the role of the mobile device.  This is a personal device and very much about "Me".  So it's reasonable to think that any data or functions that are central to the user would be good candidates for mobilization.  With PM Central we felt that the My Summary section was a natural fit for mobilization.  It's a personal dashboard showing information and data owned by the user.

The first step we take in almost every project we do is come up with some concept sketches.  These are helpful for the developer that will create the app, but really it was helpful for us to get validation from Bamboo that this would be a good piece to mobile-enable.  These are the original sketches for the concept.

The next step in the process is to gather any resources needed for the app (images, custom CSS, etc.).  I want to mention this step because it highlights a lot of the benefits Mobile Entrée brings to the table.  In the sketch above, there is only one element that the Mobile Entrée framework doesn't support out of the box.  Our system provides all the aesthetically pleasing controls you need to create rich mobile applications, yet if there is something it doesn't provide, you have the freedom to create it yourself.  We do not provide a status bar control, but I was able to create one for use in this application in about an hour.  Custom controls, like the status bar, are a combination of CSS and XSLT additions.

Once I had everything together I handed it off to Ben, one of our engineers.  His process starts by creating a SharePoint module in Visual Studio 2008.  He adds a reference to the Mobile Entrée assembly, creates a class implementing the EntreeServer.Module.EntreeApplication class, and the rest would be best suited for a tutorial.  The important thing to note here is that the PMC mobile application is created inside a SharePoint feature.  This is extending Microsoft's best practice for application development for the desktop to mobile devices as well.  And this one application developed in .NET will run across all the mobile platforms supported by Mobile Entrée (BlackBerry, Windows Phone, iPhone, Palm webOS).

To give an idea of the kind of ROI you can achieve utilizing Mobile Entrée as the platform for your mobile applications, let's take a look at the numbers from the PMC mobile app.

Concept Sketching          - 2 hrs
Artwork & CSS/XSLT       - 2 hrs
Development                    - 15 hrs
Testing                               - 1 hr

20x$180/hour = $3,600 for development
($180 is obviously high for an internal resource, but this is based on our ME consulting rate)

I hope the picture this paints to you, as a developer, is one of opportunity.  The mobile application space is a lot of fun to be in.  You have to be creative, but there are a lot of pains out there that can be alleviated with good mobile solutions.  Mobile Entrée offers a very low barrier of entry to any SharePoint developer who would like to enter the market and be successful providing mobile applications.